Uncle Sam wants you — to play video games for the US Army
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Uncle Sam wants you — to play video games for the US Army
The Army is putting together a team of video gamers from within its ranks to try to reach young Americans in the digital worlds where they spend much of their time.
More than 15 years after launching “America’s Army,” a first-person shooter game aimed at enlisting real world soldiers, the Army is calling for active duty troops and reservists to compete in video gaming tournaments, or esports, in one of its latest recruiting efforts…
Stars and Stripes
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Solution: Army makes free Fortnite clone for Consoles.
Observation: Army starts gushing with little kids.
Free healthcare for member and family.
Free college up to $4500 per year.
College paid for 36 months for my child.
30-days paid vacation every year.
Free job progression and training.
Free legal assistance.
Free tax preparation.
VA Loan mortgage program.
Free Housing / Substantial housing allowance.
Food allowance.
Clothing allowance.
Free dental and vision care.
Travel the world. See the world.
And my Chik-fil-A discount.
If the Army wants eSports (see the R&R forum), they should obviously pair AA5 with their eSports initiative. SUre, AA5 will never be as big as DOTA, LoL, CSGO. But there's some sweet marketing potential to bring a team of real life Army gamers to these festivals/conventions and host small-scale events/tournaments that often occur with the less popular games. Like an undercard to a boxing main event, AAPG could start making the rounds at Dreamhack and whatnot with CSGO, LoL and DOTA2 headliners.
How sweet would it be to have 5 Army dudes in uniform walk up on the stage, greet the crowd and hang around after the match for some PR? You're welcome.
Chick-fil-A discount makes it worth it
Stan Lee and Dr. Seuss would be proud.
Washington Times
We're not taught well enough in school about simple economics. Every kid thinks they're going to go college, graduate, and make $100k per year. Society has created this fake reality...or maybe it's the for profit universities who created it. Enlisting in the service just isn't good enough anymore to a lot of these high school kids.
Side bar: the government really [TOS Violation] up one of their biggest retention incentives: 50% retirement pay after 20 years. I enlisted 12 years ago knowing that if I did 20 years service, I'd get 50% of my paycheck for the rest of my life. Had that been sold to be under the new retirement system, I'd do my time and go find another high paying job in the defense contractor world. So, the Govt really shot the DoD in the foot at future retention...especially for the career fields/MOS's in "demand" such as cyber and intel.
So sure, they can pursue these kids watching Twitch. But unless they lower physical fitness standards, height/weight entry requirements, drug usage restrictions, level of legal issues (to include traffic violations)...all of which are BAD IDEAS from a warfighter standpoint...they will continue to struggle with recruitment.
These law makers want to make the military less and less attractive by slashing benefits, and this is the result. Take a look at countries like Germany. The military isn't special at all, and they have to do radical things to get people in the service. Oh, you're an IT guy? Perfect, here's the rank of E-5 automatically. The future is that they'll now be E-8's in less than 10 years, working side-by-side with their NATO counterparts (ahem, the US), who may work their entire 20+ years and never hit E-8.
The fact is, you water down the benefits and you also water down the talent pool and retention abilities. How much does Uncle Sam want to spend on defense? It's about the people just as much as it is about the technology and weapons.
US: Navy Veteran
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